the crown on my head, the thorns at my feet
by altairity
Summary: William elects the interim ruler, whose quest should be over, only it isn't. And Solomon's awakening should be a celebration, but every look at the body he possesses brings back an indelible nostalgia instead. A look at each of the three demon's reigns in Hell. Threeshot. Part III (Dantalion): "Give me the ring back, Dantalion."
1. Sytry

These oneshots will reference current events in the manga, and aspects of Dantalion, Sytry, and Camio's natures and powers that are revealed in Isaac's Undercover Section.

the _crown_ on my head,  
the **thorns** at my feet

 **Part I. Sytry**  
 _The puppet-prince cuts off his own strings._

* * *

A palace foregrounds his elegant androgyny, and a crown and scepter accent it. From all angles he is admired, but he does not fool himself that admiration is respect. Only one of Hell's inhabitants regards him in that right, and in his own.

"Ruling does not suit you." Solomon laces his fingers through a long trail of Sytry's pale hair. Between the two of them crowns have no place. The moonlight through the parlor window casts him in fractured layers of blue, his hands the same color as Sytry's locks. "As it did not suit me. We are alike in this, Sytry."

"And yet it is not truly I who sits on the throne," Sytry responds, careful not to let weariness color his voice.

"Ah, that is true. Are you still content to be Baalberith's puppet-doll?"

Sytry remains quiet, tracing a pattern on Solomon's robe. His old friend has taken to dressing like his self of ancient times in long flowing clothes, which hang gracefully on William Twining's body. From the moment of Sytry's coronation on, the ring of wisdom has sat on his finger. At moments it is still uncanny, because they are still William's eyes, but dulled with Solomon's placid wisdom.

Solomon is often gone, flitting through the domains of Hell to revisit old acquaintances or pillars, or surfacing to the human world to explore. It was self-education, he proclaimed, the pursuit of enlightenment on the state of the times after so long a dormancy in the vessels of his descendants. For all Sytry knows, he may visit the heavens as well, if only to taunt them for what they once held.

"What should I do, Solomon?"

"Surely you shouldn't take advice from me," says the wise man. "After all, I set my own father in prison. But you have other options."

"I couldn't kill Uncle. It would look terribly suspicious, and cause more of an upset than I'd wish."

Solomon tilts his head to one side. "But if you were to attack him and drive him to the brink of exhausting his powers… you know, these days there's not a single high-ranking demon who hasn't stayed up past his or her time for rest. Matters in Hell have just been so unstable until recently. If you did it, you'd cut him off from executing the rest of his plans. And a hundred, two hundred years from now when he wakes, you may have the balance of power at court already shifted in your favor." He laughs, a dark, tinkling sound. "Imagine! He'll go to sleep not only with his plans unfulfilled, but also knowing that the pawn he thought he had so securely under his thumb has in fact become a king more than in appearance."

Sytry considers this as squares of blue light elongate on the floor. The demon world thinks of him in terms of his noble breeding and diplomacy rather than raw power and ambition. His followers flatter him, likening his way of speaking to the fall of silk, and fawn to see him dressed in a similar manner. They act as if he doesn't know that the four kings are still scheming behind him, his uncle more than any. To them he is merely a figurehead, as he has never given them cause to dispute.

To strike down those assumptions, to topple the chessboard they believe fixed… _Am I ready for this?_ he thinks. There is an emptiness where there would have been doubt to answer.

* * *

"You are doing well, my beautiful doll," Baalberith murmurs, one hand sunk in his hair. Sytry inclines his head in acknowledgement, allowing Baalberith's fingers to creep across his scalp. It gives his uncle pleasure to see the interim ruler of Hell still kneeling at his feet. "The Eastern Duke's cabinet wishes you to review their proposal for a special forces team dedicated to protecting Lucifer. A waste of funds, if you ask me. Be sure to reject it at their appeal tomorrow."

"Yes, Uncle."

"Good. You have never, never disappointed me." Baalberith's fingers close in a fist, and he yanks Sytry's head to his. His uncle's lips are rancid smoke and an earthquake he has learned to bear, as usual.

When their meeting ends, Sytry unfolds himself into a standing position and exits the chamber. He does not break his stride as he passes Gilles de Rais, who lifts a smirk in acknowledgement, or as he walks back to the palace, or as he comes to where Dantalion and Camio are waiting at his request in the parlor.

His two head generals greet him with salutes. Authority now allows him to brook the coldness in their eyes.

"What is it, Sytry?" Dantalion folds his arms across his chest.

"A confidential mission." He lowers himself into a loveseat and nabs a mille-feuille from the table's dessert stand. Its sweetness clears the pungent aftertaste in his mouth.

Between bites, he gives them his commands. He doesn't pretend they are anything but a monarch's orders, ones that supersede their loyalties to even their own regional kings. Tolerant as they were at the school, coldly courteous though they are now, they have not come to respect him on his own grounds. But as they are no longer obliged to continue their pretense at human relations, nothing stops him from exercising the authority that is now his right.

Dantalion bows low, the crimson cape swinging from his shoulder. Camio nods. Now more than before, the words they exchange are few, and never ones that dwell on the past, or on personal history. As they sweep out of the room, he leans back on the loveseat and plucks an Eccles cake from the stand.

To wait is all that remains. In all the sundry pleasures available to him as interim ruler, he knows he'll find not a moment's true diversion. Leonard creates for him the most exquisite cherry truffles drizzled with white chocolate, trembling vanilla soufflés dusted in powdered sugar, and even mooncakes and fluffy lotus seed buns he swears are authentic from his time in China. All of them are delicious, and none of them is satisfying. Among the exquisite variety of desserts, the one he longs for the most surprises him—if only he could somehow import (or sneak down) the Carr's biscuits he enjoyed so much at Stratford.

Meanwhile, desire could be his plaything, but he has lost even the curiosity to sate it. If he wanted, he could weave himself into illusion and gorge on every fine demon or demoness in sight, but what would be the use when now he can just as well command them to submit as their ruler? And those were indulgences he sickened of anyways in his early days as a demon of desire. Whenever anyone remarked on the softness of his skin, he could not help but wonder what they would have said about his feathers. And then would come the admission that if he still had his wings, he and the night's lover would never have been there in the first place to lie together in sin.

* * *

Sytry receives the news of Dantalion and Camio's success with his chin high and his gaze untroubled. It is important to face all new developments like this, for Hell's ever-delicate sense of decorum rests on his fine-boned shoulders.

Meeting with the other high-ranking lords afterwards at banquets and conferences is almost amusing, especially when he registers the new look of apprehension they wear when they look at him. Everyone knows who must have commanded the deed, but no one dares say it aloud. Sytry joins them in eulogizing Baalberith's sleep, and the demons bow their heads in wary condolence. Elegance is his offense and defense to political matters; he wields it like a knife.

Gilles de Rais is not one of those amused, or impressed. All throughout the meetings and dinners his eyes burn. The third day after Baalberith goes to sleep, he bursts into Sytry's private study.

Rage pinches his face white, so that the curlicue of blue under his eye distorts into a twisted smear. Not often does he lose the hint of mirth that lingers by his mouth, but when he does…

"A puppet has no right to cut off his own strings, don't you think? That old man was my ticket to Heaven." He bares his teeth. "My ticket to Jeanne."

"As he was mine for my lost wings," Sytry says, too quietly for Gilles to hear.

"You'll pay for disrupting my plans, Sytry. Especially since no one is here to protect you now."

Sytry leaps backwards, out of the way of the blue fireburst, and lands on light feet. He draws up the silken tone he reserves for speaking to aristocrats at important meetings. "If you do not desist in threatening me, I will have you condemned for treason, Gilles de Rais. Should you still wish to fight, remember that I have been granted the boon of Solomon's powers through his sanction of my rule."

Gilles de Rais rushes forward anyways, just as he had time and again tried to wrest the power to break open Heaven and Hell from Solomon's own hands. Sytry dodges and calls a bolt of energy to his palm. Solomon's power flushes through him, enhancing his reflexes and steadying his aim, setting his muscles atremble. When he releases the bolt, it slams Gilles flat against the opposite wall. The shock makes the younger demon's face go slack.

 _I am powerful now_ , Sytry thinks, drawing himself tall. _More so than Dantalion or even Camio._ The government of Hell, an unlimited household, his choice of courtesans, the finest sweets—all of it rests before him to be cupped in the palm of his hand just as easily as he might lift a teacup to his lips.

Sytry leaves Gilles de Rais sprawled against his study wall for his guards to take care of and wanders into his parlor. "Make me a chocolate cake," he says to Leonard, who bows and trots out. He crunches on a toffee cookie as he waits and tries to rejoice. He is free, he thinks—

—although what can freedom mean to one who has known flight on feathered wings?

* * *

"Now that you've done this, my fallen angel, the doors of Heaven are closed to you forever."

The wind that blows through the curtains is cool and sulfur-tinged, a far cry from the warm sirocco that used to float about them in Israel. Sytry lifts his head from Solomon's knees. "Were they not from the moment I accepted the crown?"

"Perhaps then there was still a chance. But with the end of Baalberith's scheme, you have barred them for good against yourself."

"Yes. I chose Hell."

"It was not a bad decision," Solomon hums. "It was what I chose, when I had all the fruits of heaven laid before me for the picking." He slips his cool hands beneath the silk of Sytry's robe and traces a finger up his spine to the nubs on his back, which from time to time are sore. Sytry does not disguise his shiver.

When he is by Solomon, his old friend makes him glad of his fall. _Purify me with your human wisdom_ , he thinks, _and I will have no need of Heaven's absolution_.

There was another, once, who made him happy to be in Earth's realm.

"Solomon… is William there?" he asks, almost timidly.

"My, my! I'll never understand why you, Camio, and Dantalion so coveted my current vessel. I never may be around any of you three for long but you glance at me as if hoping to see someone else." But Solomon's laugh is too gracious for jealousy. "His presence remains under mine, however, and it is a strong-willed one. Sometimes I almost anticipate him breaking through with sheer stubbornness. But most of the time he is… quiet."

Sytry curls a little closer to his king on the loveseat so that he may gaze into Solomon's eyes. They are a placid green, the green of lily pads or thirsty grass. And then something unthinkable happens: he looks into those cool, blank eyes and wishes with all his heart to see one moment of William's apple-bright irises instead.

What he gave up the chance to regain his wings for was not merely to be free to rule Hell as he wished; it was also to be saved by Solomon, or the one who had inherited his wisdom, and return meaning to a life without wings. He has the freedom now, and he has Solomon. What remains to be missed?

Why does he long for purposeless days running through the academy's grounds, the companionship of his fellow demons playing at being classmates, and the pursuit of an edict that had once never seemed likely to be given? Does he miss Earth because it was closer to Heaven, enough to carry its scent? In a human who contained the barest trace of a memory of divinity, did he find a world that was preferable to it?

Did he then watch in silence as that human was forced to slip on the ring at his coronation, as the scintillation of his brilliance faded to the steady twinkle of another's wisdom?

No matter how it falls, he has exchanged one friend for another, and allowed him to be buried in the depths of a soul that is not his. Sytry leans back, suddenly hating his regal clothes, the lacquered parlor, and Solomon's impenetrable smile. All the crowns of Hell and wings of Heaven cannot equal the candor of a realist's eyes.

* * *

A/N: These three chapters consist of different branches of William's decision of interim ruler. Camio's part is next, followed by Dantalion's.


	2. Camio

"[Camio's] human form is that of a young man holding a sabre, but his true form is that of a thrush. He can tell his summoner what birds and animals are saying, as well as the meaning behind the sound that water makes." —Isaac's Undercover Section

the _crown_ on my head,  
the **thorns** at my feet

 **Part II. Camio  
** _Half demon, half human. Half regret: half responsibility._

* * *

Solomon asks him to play piano, and he obliges. His fingers braid the melodies as swiftly now as in the decades when he first learned them; the dexterity of their movements brings pleasure to them both. They live in the aftermath of a great explosion of human culture. Camio's hands recapture the first glories of Chopin's ornamented nocturnes, Schumann's song cycles, Liszt's virtuosic études. Rich and thick and deep, the last chords sound with a stilling of the air.

Solomon begins to applaud just before the echoes end. "Marvelous. I could listen to you all day. Camio… why did you want to be interim ruler? You've enough talent in all fields to have your choice of lifestyle."

Camio sweeps a tumbled lock of hair back over his shoulder and looks at his companion. Solomon is leaning back on the divan, one arm spread over its back, legs crossed. He continues: "Did you think your power and temperance would make you the best suited of the candidates to rule? Did you want to claim the demon world as yours in retaliation for their scorn at your mixed blood?" A smirk glimmers by his lips. "Or perhaps you were merely bored of crafting trinkets for your beloved?"

"None of those."

"I see. Regardless, you realize you can now sculpt Hell however it suits you. Lesser demons would take advantage of that."

"There would be no point. It is just as lonely at the top as it is at the margins."

"Ah, so you'll join the legacy of unhappy kings so prominent in human literature. I've been catching up on Shakespeare, you see."

Solomon stands, tucking a volume under his cape, and exits the parlor with a mocking bow. Camio stays a while longer at the piano's edge. Even the company of Solomon, his only equal, does not ease him these days, though that doesn't stop him from seeking it. The former king is not as he was in ancient times.

Once, before he met Solomon, he'd thought it was the company of other halflings he needed, fellow beings who understood their curse. Realizing that they were no different from the rest of their demon brethren, he then thought it had been Solomon who could heal him, isolated by his genius as he was by his power. That illusion remained for millennia following, draping his world in grey after the wise man's death.

In moments like these, absently feeling the vacancy in him Solomon used to fill, it comes to him suddenly: the knowledge that once there had been a time when he had lived without loneliness, and the whiplash when he realizes that it is past.

* * *

Within the week, he has settled a dispute between two opposing households, trained a new regiment of his army, and defended Hell from a fallen angel's kamikaze attack at its gates. The popular opinion is that he is managing Hell's affairs remarkably well. Any prejudice the higher demons might have had towards his nature is ceding to respect. Things are as they should be. Returning to his quarters after the day, he steps towards the graceful shadow waiting in the hallway.

"Maria…"

Frozen at an earlier age, she is ravishing and lovely and everything she was at twenty, but sharpened with the scythe-edge of demonhood. Her dress still has a touch of the demure, with white lace where the slit opens on her thigh and a high neckline with an embroidered collar. She smiles, but the lines around her eyes remain.

She is the most beautiful demoness he has ever seen, and the least fitting one. It is right, and wrong, his choice. There are no demon words for their relationship—or human ones, anymore.

"Camio, I visited Stratford today." Maria continues to care for the school, like a plant they nurture together. "The barrier seems to have a few cracks. With the Sabbath coming up, I worry."

"I'll have it reinforced." He presses a kiss to her mouth, then the back of her hand, wondering why all his caresses have the tone of apologies.

After he excuses himself to the study, he has just enough time to take off his gloves before John knocks. "Come in."

"Camio." John inclines his head, palm pushing the door closed behind him. "You have no more engagements for today. Maybe you should spend the night at home."

He looks across the room, to its window overlooking the moors. It's not that he doesn't want to, but what is there that isn't here?

"You've never been a workaholic," John says softly.

"I'm not becoming one," Camio promises.

The furrow in his brow deepens. "Camio… you haven't been back to your estate for weeks. You haven't sculpted, or blown glass, or crafted anything."

True enough, the cluttered basement of his mansion is untouched, a cemetery for his hobbies. "I've played the piano for Solomon," he murmurs.

John sighs, running a hand through his lion's mane of blond hair. "You need to stop thinking that that ancient geezer can give you all the companionship you need. Live here, in the present. Maria loves you. I… care for you. But I never know what to do for you," his household member admits, picking up his coat.

Camio smiles at that. John Dee, who manages all of his legal as well as personal affairs now, doing the job of ten cabinet ministers with the unharried manner of one, not knowing what to do? "You do enough, John." He lays a hand on the former astrologer's shoulder as he leaves.

It's true, and he appreciates that _enough_ , even if it doesn't quite reach him where he needs to be reached. He wonders why even the steadfast candor of his old friend seems faraway to him, like a distant and benevolent star that has nothing to do with the darkness of the earth.

Camio puts away the scattered quills on his desk and caps the inkpot. He separates tomorrow's paperwork from the pile of documents, lines up his stamps by their inkpads, and casts security enchantments on his locks and drawers. There is a long stretch of time remaining between today's dusk and tomorrow's dawn. Perhaps he will visit Stratford in person after all.

He sinks into the magic circle inscribed in the center of his study, reappearing in a flourish of purple light in the forests outside the academy. Here, it is almost autumn, the heat hanging heavy on the air. The bell-clarity of the birdcalls absolves him of Hell's smoke and fog. Lights already glow through the windows of the school. Roll call, he thinks absently.

As he places his hand upon the crystal barrier sealing Stratford grounds from the demon world, he thinks of how he misses too the forest and the rivers. Wind seldom stirs the air, but it provokes the trees to whispering. The water murmurs its welcome in the surrender of its lapping waves. Only the naïve fear nature or believe it holds some arcane secret.

The barrier reinforced, he steps back. Back when he met Maria here, he had already learned to perfectly split himself in half, the ostracized demon honing his combat skills outside the school on one hand and the model student inside it on the other. Just so, he'll handle his job as interim ruler perfectly. It's almost natural, almost just, for him to prove his capability as Lucifer's son (illegitimate or not) by succeeding his father's reign. And for the other half—that gaping sense of remove from the world that even Maria and John cannot bridge…

Nathan Caxton is a ghost. The long centuries of his stay as Head Boy are over. That was a time when he would put on his glasses and cover his shoulders with his mantle and suddenly find himself able to smile. The students with their sleepy or earnest gazes seemed to erase millennia of grey memories when he was taking care of them. William Twining used to be one of them, before he awakened to his destiny; he used to grace Camio with that look of innocent awe, and even continued to, time to time, after becoming aware of being the Elector.

There was something restorative and vital in William, completely unrelated to Solomon. Camio made sure never to ask of him more than he could give, as Sytry and Dantalion often did. Somehow just watching those three, even when he wasn't with him, made his skin prickle with relish of life in the way that neither the companionship of fellow outcasts nor the cold intelligence of a superior mind could.

He had thought memories of the firework of intrigue and peril that was the battle for the election would be enough to last him through the present. Was that not what memories were for, to linger in the mind to give comfort or spur revenge? Instead, feeling lost among the branches and sky of his domain, he wonders why he wants more and more of those days. Why he wants them to continue as they could not have, instead of clutching at the echoes of that laughter now.

* * *

"Like this?" Solomon breathes, his fingers stiffly splayed over the keys.

"More like this." Camio places his own hand over Solomon's and presses. The sound that it produces is ugly, but the touch of their hands is familiar, and beautiful. To be held in someone else's arms, to give his life and will to Solomon: that had been comfort, in eons past. As he is now, the wise man is spare in his affections, and elusive in his motives.

Camio sighs, ceases the piano lesson, and begins to play _Traümerei_. The solitary melody arcs upward as if reaching for the brightness of the past, grasping it at its highest point, and consenting to only wander in the memory of it thereafter in softer, lower tones. Perhaps Schumann's poetry of nostalgia speaks to them both; he can feel those veiled green eyes on him. "Does William reside within you still, Solomon?"

"Why… yes." Solomon tilts his head, his hands folded in his lap. "But he doesn't seem to have anything to say to you."

So Camio continues playing.

* * *

A few days later he is working in his study in the morning only to be informed that all of his engagements for the afternoon have been canceled.

"Because," John says, wryly smiling, "you've worked enough for the week. Come, let's go back to the estate. There are some friends waiting."

"Very well…" They sink into the portal together, and arise in front of his house in Guernsey. The day is fair, the sea breeze glimmering with the scent of salt. On his front lawn, beneath the full-crowned trees, a picnic table is laden with English sandwiches, jam, and meat pies.

He doesn't know what to think when he sees Maria, Beelzebub, Dantalion, Sytry, and a few other demons from his retinue sitting at it, except that it looks complete even without Solomon. "Did you prepare all of this, John?"

John bows. "It's just lunch."

"It's perfect. Thank you."

"I quite approve of these meat pies," Beelzebub is telling Maria, half of one in his hand. "Perhaps you should consider making them for some of the royal banquets."

"Oh, thank you, but I hardly think they'd do next to John's cooking." She smiles warmly at Camio as he takes his place next to her, and their hands find each other under the table.

Across from them, Sytry licks frosting from his fingers, his plate already smeared with the remnants of date pudding and butterscotch custard. He and Dantalion nod at Camio, and if it is not the friendly banter they share among themselves, it is enough.

John draws up the chair next to him, and the lunch passes in cheerful pleasantry. A pitcher of iced tea goes around the table. The sun lapses through the clouds now and then to gild their plates in gold. John has gone to lengths to procure the choicest ingredients, and it shows: the apple and Lancashire cheese pie is crisp and autumn-fragrant, the Beef Wellington tender inside, the Cornish pasties hearty and buttery. He catches Dantalion and Sytry whispering to each other, comparing their own butlers' efforts with a tinge of what seems jealousy.

After they eat, some of the demons rise to admire the view from the cliffs. Though he is hosting, it suits him that when he wanders away from the gathering for a bit none of them notices.

He retreats to the woods at the side of his estate, to a clearing masked by shrubbery from which he can see over the cliffs. The sea beyond is sparkling fiercely, as if in last protest of late summer, flaring its remaining collected light at once. He enjoys the solitude for a few moments before his head general shoulders through a crisscross of thorns, cursing.

"Yes?"

"Hey, Camio." Dantalion brushes pollen off his cape. They haven't spoken outside of his office since the coronation. "I want to know what you think about Hell and being interim ruler so far. You're doing excellent, but…"

Sometimes the other demon looks at him this way, ears pink and mouth half-open in an unasked question, as if he has all the answers just as he did when he was Head Boy, and it makes Camio wish they were back at the school where he did.

"What's on your mind?" he asks instead.

"I know things are as they should be now," Dantalion mutters, "but I feel as if we missed something. Couldn't we have ended this another way?"

"You're speaking of Solomon, are you not?"

"I don't want to look at him," he admits, the points of his teeth flashing. "I'd give lives and years of turmoil for William to be here instead."

The taller demon corners him with his violet (a shade away from violent) gaze. Camio feels a spark of unwilling admiration, because in those eyes he can still see the demon that played his flute and heralded doom to his human people, whereas he… He has long accepted that his legacy is in his ancestry rather than his deeds; something whispered of and not shouted, least of all because Lucifer, who fathered him behind a veil of secrecy, had taken Dantalion into his contract instead. But he had dealt with that resentment eons ago.

Dantalion's passions still have the spin of destruction to them, and his feelings for William will likely endanger whatever remains of the boy rather than coax him out. "I know what he meant to you," Camio says simply, safely. That will have to be Dantalion's journey, and not his.

Dantalion snorts and abruptly turns back. His exit has something hasty to it, as if he fears to let his admission turn into a weakness in front of the other. Won't he realize that far from that, Camio is almost envious of it?

He turns back to the grove. The days before he took John into his household, the days when his eyes were as hard and dead as agate moons, he used to ramble these outskirts and stare unseeing at the many-petaled flowers that grew among the cracks in the cliffs, and Solomon was just a memory still healing over.

He feels it, acutely: that though he was born equally of the raging fires of Hell and the warrior-traditions of Earth, he still belongs in neither their realms. Only in the illusory days at Stratford, spent half fooling around in the academy and half fighting angels and demons outside it, was the isolation that neither a demon father nor a human lover could heal annulled. All that passed, and _now_ means _after_. When it was time for him to leave the school and take on the duty sanctioned him, he left. He has acted beyond reproach, and more than purified the stigma around his name.

Yet the throne is coaxing him back towards those long, cold millennia without color. Camio closes his eyes, a gesture of salt wind weaving through his hair. The leaves murmur their condolences to his unspoken thoughts. They know of loneliness, and it is no arcane secret but the eclipsed nature of all things. Perhaps soon he will forget that there was a time when he had lost its vocabulary altogether.


	3. Dantalion

the _crown_ on my head,  
the **thorns** at my feet

Part III. Dantalion  
 _"Give me the ring back, Dantalion."_

* * *

Dantalion whirls like the wind in monsoon, and twin arcs of energy burst from his palms to sink into the chests of the lesser demons attacking. Another swath of them falls. He feels a presence at his back and nearly swings before he recognizes it as Gilgamesh, the golden blade by his side, who extends an arm and cuts down another file of fiends.

Together, circling around back to back, they make short work of the foes. Battlelust fills Dantalion's veins and empties his soul.

He spends as much time as possible out on the field now that he's been crowned king, even though he has legions of demons to fight for him and his throne is supposed to be a governmental one. Well, damn that. He prefers to lead the old-fashioned way. Perhaps Baphomet would have protested, but Gilgamesh eagerly joins him on the field. And when it comes down to it, that suits him just fine.

"Another job done," Gilgamesh whistles as they walk back, one hand in his hair as he covertly tries to ruffle it into its usual rakish dishevelment. He slides on a smile. "I'll say that's a good day's work. I'm looking forward to dinner."

Gilgamesh can't cook worth a damn like Baphomet could, but they have a whole retinue of servants to do that now. When they arrive back at the palace, two rush forth to receive their bloodied uniforms, another two scrabble upstairs to prepare baths, and two disappear into the kitchens to cook their evening meal.

In the clarity underlit by three chalices of wine, Dantalion raises his eyes to his companion's face. Gilgamesh is everything a household member may and should be: advisor, friend, comrade-in-arms, lover. Well, he does lack in domestic ability. Yet Dantalion finds himself following him nonetheless—following, even though he ought to be the leader of the two.

So why, for example, is he following him into the back chambers yet again, as if magnetized? Why can't he tear his eyes away from the nape of Gilgamesh's neck, arched and exposed, vulnerable in all the ways Gilgamesh would never admit?

Why do they do this every night as if everything in his past could be simply negated—and why does he have the sense that he doesn't want it to be so?

"Come, Dantalion," Gilgamesh breathes, his mouth a slit, his eyes two malevolent poles, his kisses black magic as Dantalion straddles him on the bed. Not a quarter of an hour later, he does.

* * *

"So Solomon visits you?"

Camio lowers his teacup. "Occasionally, to report on his travels, or to converse on new knowledge."

Dantalion releases a guttural sigh. "And he comes to Sytry too?"

"Yes." His third-in-command's expression remains careful. Dantalion can taste the discretion he exudes. It hangs like a warning in the air, a question not to be broached.

But it is not in his power to remain discreet about that person. "Why doesn't he remember me?" he asks gruffly.

"I don't know," Camio sighs. His gloved fingertips twitch, and he closes his hands on the table. "Perhaps the trauma of your last meeting caused him to forget you without meaning it."

"Damn it, Camio! We're not talking about some emotionally fragile man-child who'd balk at painful memories. I was his best friend."

"In many ways he _is_ still a child," Camio muses, ignoring Dantalion's outburst. "Even William understands matters of the heart more than he does sometimes."

Little else comes from the meeting. The moment he exits the parlor, Amon and Mammon unperch from the corners of the hallway and bat his head indignantly with their wings.

"Master! Returning to your desk, I hope?"

"You have important documents from the Four Kings to review before tomorrow's meeting, you know!"

He brushes them off, striding towards the palace exit. With Astaroth still sleeping and Lamia still growing into her role, there is no one to chastise him for skipping his paperwork except his familiars.

The moment he steps outside the opulent curlicues of the palace and breathes in Hell's familiar sulfuric aroma, he relaxes. Unseen by the demons around him, Dantalion teleports to a mansion on the other side of Hell.

He surfaces in a lounge. Its sole occupant lets out only an ambivalent hum at his unnanounced entrance, and continues snowing a spoonful of powdered sugar over his slice of strawberry shortcake.

Dantalion takes in a deep breath, studying the androgynous demon seated before him with his eyes so blue and wide.

"Sytry," he barks. "I need some information on Solomon."

* * *

As reported, the wise man is strolling about the ruins of Hell's outer circles. Dantalion can only guess at what he's looking for, overturning stones and bending down at marks in the sand. He shows no sign of noticing the demon tailing him, which irks Dantalion more than he'll admit. But if Solomon has forgotten his scent, that makes this all the easier.

Solomon peers at an enclave of fallen rock. _Now_. Dantalion leaps for him from behind and wrestles one arm behind his back, reaching for the ring on the other.

"Let go of me, demon, if you have any care for your life." Solomon's voice preserves its odd calm.

"You still don't remember me, hm?" Dantalion forces Solomon's caught hand further behind his back, cutting off the energy starting to bud around it. With his other, he inches towards the ring, which Solomon protects by clenching his hand into a fist. "That doesn't matter. I'm not here to talk to you this time. I want to speak with William. I know he's there."

Solomon sneers, a glow of energy lighting up his face. "Maybe, but he doesn't seem to want to say hello to you."

Dantalion swallows. Don't be ridiculous, he tells himself. Don't listen. Before Solomon can force him away with a blast of power again, he channels energy into his arm and sweeps it down Solomon's. The shock forces Solomon to release his hand, and in that moment Dantalion snatches the ring clear off.

Solomon's body goes slack. Before he can regain consciousness, Dantalion calls up an illusion, and yellow walls close up the filthy air of Hell. He hurries and rests the body in a sitting position on one of the couches, at the same time tucking the ring of wisdom into his pocket.

"Where are we?" The voice that stirs from the boy's body is not Solomon's. Dantalion sucks in his breath.

"The common room," he says.

William sits up. It's like looking at a ghost, if ghosts could have eyes like that. The entire way he holds his body— _the_ body—changes, falling into a more relaxed pose, as befits the naivety of a schoolchild with mussed hair.

"Dantalion…" William tenses, drawing a hairbreadth back, into his prefect pose. Dantalion has watched him assume it many times before, in the times when William's feeling nervous as much as when he wants to convey a _lick-my-boots_ type of authority. "Why am I awake? What did you do to him?"

Dantalion says nothing. The words stop in his throat, watching the boy stir back into his own skin.

"I know we're in Hell."

"Damn it, William." His voice catches. "Must we speak of that right now? I haven't seen you in months."

"I know how long it's been." William looks down at his cape as if he expected to be in his school uniform. "I can see through Solomon's eyes if I want. Did you make this illusion just for me? How thoughtful."

"William. Why have you been avoiding me? Why has Solomon forgotten me?"

"You should know the answer to both."

"I don't." Dantalion leans forward, holds William around the shoulders. He moves, instinctively, to press his forehead against the other boy's. William pulls back.

"Do you remember how I chose you?"

Dantalion nods. William had rushed into this same room of which he has made a facsimile, his mantle disheveled and his eyes wild. He had pronounced his verdict with unexpected conviction.

"Do you know why I elected you, Dantalion?"

The question echoes off empty space, sending the lace doilies on the tables to shivering.

"Gilgamesh forced my hand. I couldn't bear to choose, even though he showed me you slaughtering… those demons…"

William's lips tremble. Dantalion has to remember that the Elector is only human, after all, and that it's his fault the gap between that and nephilim has grown into such the abyss.

"...In the end, he threatened me with Sytry and Camio. That he would kill them if I didn't elect you. I saw the blade in his hand. They didn't know it, but it was at their throats."

His shoulders fall, suddenly bereft of tension, and Dantalion can feel the fragility of William's bones in his hands, like a secret he's been entrusted with and cannot keep.

Something at the core of him heats into fire. The walls of the parlor throb like the heartbeat neither of them has. "The snake...!" he hisses. All their violence that to Gilgamesh was mere foreplay. A sick pit opens in his stomach as he thinks of their divided kills and shared pleasure. Their hot skin, reeking of _sin_.

"It's done." William's face smooths back into simplicity. He extends his hand, palm up.

"I... I'm sorry, William. I had no idea. I'll stab the fiend myself," he growls, ignoring William's hand and trying to push aside the blackness clawing at his consciousness. _Later_. "But you don't have to avoid me anymore because of that."

"Give me the ring back, Dantalion."

"Sytry and Camio are still here, and they're important to me. And I'm not doing a poor job at the helm; I wouldn't have disgraced your choice. Even the skeptics are beginning to support me."

"Hn. That just means they've forgotten you used to be human—and that maybe you have too." He flexes his open hand.

"All right, William." He bows his head. "I'm sorry I didn't trust you back then. I'll earn your confidence back properly this time. Just please stay here." A rattling shakes the air, from the table at their feet.

"Do you think I could bear to be in Hell, even if you did?" The apples of William's cheeks flush pink. "Don't show me this illusion of Stratford you've made and make me think of the days we used to have." William shudders, drawing his head down. The heat in Dantalion's chest sublimates to ice. "I don't want to see you, and Sytry, and Camio murdering, and know that I can't see Isaac or Mycroft or even Mathers anymore. Better Solomon see it all!"

He slumps into Dantalion's arms, and the air lights as if a match has been struck.

"Dantalion, give the ring back to me."

"William—"

The walls crumble down into so many crumbs and flakes.

The polished tables shatter back into crags of obsidian.

All that is left is the familiar sulfur smell, and the waste that is Dantalion's birthright.

"I don't—" William's voice breaks, and he tries again. He has to clear his throat twice to get it right. "I don't want to see this. Or you. You asked why Solomon forgot."

And Dantalion knows: why would he want to remember?

The past floods him, a river overspilling its banks. Dantalion closes his eyes against it. He knows he should have found some other way, all those millennia ago, rather than let his best friend die at his own hands. The shell of that friend now would have wanted it.

When he opens his eyes, William is still gazing at him, though there are tears in his too. And Hell burns as brightly as ever behind.

"Please give me the ring back."

* * *

 **A/N** : Sorry this took forever, I jumped fandoms and had to drag myself back here to finish this. That said, I hope you enjoyed this trio of oneshots, and please let me know your thoughts.


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